Healing Adalbert
by Kay Willow
Summary: Once upon a time, Adalbert fell in love with an amazing girl -- and lost her. That was the beginning.


**.healing adalbert.**

I.  
The first time Adalbert ever met Julia, she was in the hallway outside her chambers, doubled over and struggling to put on a boot. He waited, pretending he couldn't see because it was only polite, but when she stumbled and toppled forward he jumped to catch her. His arm like a steel bar across her shoulders, he helped her get her balance back.

"Thank you for your help," she said, looking at him with unseeing pale blue eyes. "I am Julia von Wincott... and I don't believe I know you?"

"My name is Adalbert von Grantz," he said, and something wondrous stirred in him at the smile she rewarded him with.

II.  
The first time Adalbert ever met Yozak, they were at the Maou's birthday party, an extravagant affair. The Mazoku was joking about how dainty women didn't suit him, and he was always afraid of crushing them; Julia was smiling, bemused, and nodding sagely as if she had experienced that same fear.

"Now, that," he said, catching sight of Yozak, resplendent in layered green silk and hanging off Conrad's arm. "That is a real woman, the redhead." He couldn't see her very well, just the flash of well-muscled limbs.

Julia tilted her head delicately, listening to the raucous voices, and said after a moment, "You mean Sir Gurrier?"

Adalbert laughed a long, long time. They still tell that story, or at least Yozak does.

III.  
He tried not to think of her as a potential wife but the idea kept intruding itself into his moments alone with her. Adalbert knew himself too well to want a strident woman like that Anissina creature who was so frequently with the Maou's eldest, nor a sly woman like the Maou herself -- although that worthy had once insinuated that she found him attractive and she'd never had a von Grantz before. If he were to marry, it would have to be to a refined, ladylike woman, but possessed of some innate special qualities that would keep her from being boring.

His friends told him that no such woman existed, and he would probably be happier married to a soldier anyway: a man who could provide a challenge in the sparring courts and follow him anywhere.

Julia suggested early in their friendship, "Tell me your thoughts on this war."

"Why?" He didn't usually talk about politics with women.

"Because thoughts need to be shared." She smiled a little, melancholy. "If you don't voice your opinions, what proof is there that they ever existed? That you ever existed?"

He loved the way the varying shades made her hair look slightly uneven, and the way she made him think of marriage.

IV.  
Everyone tiptoed around Julia, treating her with delicacy and kindness that they might never have showed another. Once she told him with the faintest touch of bitterness that perhaps they reserved that courtesy for those they deemed cripples; but more often she was good-natured about the life that she led. She would smile when asked, and say something like, "There's an old saying that warns that people who can't take compliments are thinking too much."

They all revered her, put her on a pedestal. She was a beloved friend and sympathetic confidante and a beautiful philosopher. She was also a mere mortal, and no one seemed to notice that except Adalbert. As often as he wanted to lay his head in her lap and let her soothe him, he also wanted to ride wild with her in the mountains, just to prove that he knew that she would not break.

She was so fond of making up sayings, to hide the secret parts of herself.

V.  
For all that, Adalbert didn't think that he could slap her. Besides the fact that he had no particular desire to cause Julia pain, he rather suspected that if he tried, half of Shin Makoku would make his life very unpleasant until he could whisk her off to an official wedding. By the time Weller had taken to shadowing them mistrustfully when he wanted them to be alone, he knew he would never get away with it.

He still wanted his proposal to be traditional. Julia was a lady; she knew and respected the traditions with a deep-seated appreciation, like he did.

When the moment was just right, and twilight on the balcony had deepened the sky-blue of her hair to match it, he reached out with one hand to cup her cheek, tenderly. Her eyes widened at the tender caress, her skin white and cool beneath his large hand.

"Be with me forever," he said.

VI.  
Julia was quiet when he told her that he would be going to war. It must have seemed to her that everyone was leaving, very nearly the only man or woman left in the palace were the elderly or the children, like the Maou's frustrated youngest who was Julia's student.

"I wonder if I should do something," she said, to no one in particular.

He seized her hands urgently, startled by the words. "Promise me," Adalbert demanded, "promise me that you will do nothing to put yourself in the line of fire!"

Julia laughed, surprised, and cradled his hands gently in hers. "They would not allow me to go to the front lines," she said simply. "Not with my eyes."

Although Adalbert knew of her work with the medical units, he did not think of that then. He only knew that he was seized with panic at the idea of her leaving the safety of Shin Makoku, and traveling to the brutality of the war.

Panic, or perhaps premonition.

VII.  
To his dying day, Adalbert will never be able to look at Geigen Hubert without thinking of that dreadful battle, and how very unnecessary it was, and how it would only be fair to take his other eye, and his sword arm, and his balls, for what he has done. Men can change and make amends, but those things so rarely impact the harsh reality of the past.

VIII.  
It was a stupid death. He knew it from the moment he was given the black-limned envelope, the official statement from the capitol. Only a fool would have drained herself to the point of exhaustion helping other people, and then continued to do so until eventually she had nothing left for herself, and died.

It was something Julia would have done. She had always believed that intentions were meaningless, and it was actions that spoke: if a man swore that he wanted peace and then marched to war to kill others, he was not a pacifist. If a woman swore that she would give her life to save others and then held back from giving her all so that her own life may be saved, she was a liar.

But he didn't want to be angry with Julia, so he blamed Shinou instead.

IX.  
It didn't comfort him that everyone agreed with him about Geigen Hubert's part in her death. He was not punished as he should have been, merely banished, given a task of attrition to perform. It was a disgrace.

Then the rumors began to spread, Adalbert had never quite known how. It was whispered that as Julia lay dying, the Original King came to her, and charged her with a task, and it was in accepting that task that she died.

He wanted to believe that, as stupid as her death had been, she was not so foolish as to give her life to a ghost of the past, still worshipped as though persisting beyond his time merited deification. Julia was surely too intelligent to sacrifice herself on a whim from Shinou. It was hard to accept that any reasonably intelligent person would do such a thing.

But slowly he watched as more and more people became convinced, and vowed that she had been so noble, so loyal, so faithful. They might not have been strong enough to do the same, they said.

Since when was it strength, Adalbert wondered, to give up everything you had for someone who ruled your life with a merciless, iron fist?

X.  
He let the Original King know how he felt as best he could. He rode up to the palace and stood at the gates where the women who served him barred the way, and he shouted things he can't even remember anymore. He made the warrior maidens swear to take his words to Shinou, just in case the old ghost couldn't know what happened at his very gate.

How could they all think of Julia as a hero simply because Shinou had made demands of her and she had bowed to them?

She was a hero because of her complete selflessness. Because of her boundless compassion and fathomless insight. Because she had been possessed of a divine inspiration. Because she had been strong enough to live when everyone tried to wrap her in swaddling clothes; not because she had died.

At first it was only grief and anger, but others told him that he was not to question, he was only a man.

He wondered, if I am only a man, and Julia is only a woman, then so too is Shinou only a man. And men, and women, are flawed creatures, who make mistakes.

They are not to be followed and revered as gods.

XI.  
It should have been raining but it was a sunny day instead when he left. Adalbert pulled his cloak up over his face anyway, like he needed to protect his eyes from the rain, or the sun, or the world. He rode through Shin Makoku and really listened to the cries of the vendors for the first time.

"Maou hotcakes!" "Stay at the inn where Shinou once rested!" "The Maou's own brandy, limited time only!" "Charms, charms, official charms from the Palace of the Original King! Bring your family under Shinou's grace!"

The Mazoku were like slaves, determined to dance with chains rattling about their feet.

XII.  
"Your king is no better than mine," Adalbert said once, referring to the Original King and not the current Maou, who was weak and had resigned anyway. "Tyrants and bullies, the whole lot of them."

Maxine agreed. "Someday," he said, his salivation at the idea all but audible, "I will overthrow that bastard on his pristine throne. Then I will be the one to lead my country to glory!"

Adalbert had never liked Maxine. Scornful, he told the man, "Glory is for those too small-minded to understand the really significant things."

He suspected that Maxine had never liked him either.

XIII.  
The first time he looked, really _looked_ at the new Maou was when Weller swore that he had Julia's soul. He couldn't see the woman he loved in that awkward boy, but everything about it haunted him. Why this boy? Why like this? Why Conrad Weller?

Why hadn't her secret been entrusted to the man that she loved?

For a while Adalbert thought that her pendant was a sign of her heart, that she had given it to Conrad to show him that she had loved him too late, and that he had given it to his king in the admittedly creepy context that he had once been Julia whom Conrad had loved. There was no doubt, looking at the twisted expressions that Weller wore when they spoke, that he had loved Julia: Adalbert knew that he had worn those same expressions.

XIV.  
Yuuri told him, one night when they met, right before the end: he said, "I think it's sad."

"What is?" Adalbert had asked.

"That you don't believe in anything anymore."

It was true, but he might as well have said, Julia would think it sad, or Julia would be sad knowing that she had caused you to stop believing. Those things would also have been true. Without some faith to guide him, what proof was there that he existed?

"I may not believe in anything," Adalbert told the boy with Julia's heart in his black eyes, "but I will be there when you need me."

XV.  
They want to give him medals or titles for his part in the victory, for seeing what none of them could see about the ghost that had held sway for thousands of years in Shin Makoku. Adalbert wants none of their pretty toys. They don't mean anything to him now and they didn't mean anything to him then.

He would, however, like a rematch with Weller -- or Gurrier -- or both. It's no fair that he still can't brag about his one-man crusade when he never really got to fight his enemy's champions, even if they are not his enemy any longer.

XVI.  
It is, of course, Yuuri who wants him to return to Shin Makoku, and Yuuri who convinces him that the awkwardness will be worth it to be home again, among his people again. He never really liked humans anyway.

It isn't Yuuri's compelling arguments that sway him. Honestly he makes a very poor persuasive speaker. It isn't his charm or his sincerity or his indestructible optimism.

It is the way he seems to forget what he is saying sometimes, and his eyes lose focus as he thinks back, and for a moment he seems like Julia, and it makes Adalbert think, Julia would hate it if I left Shin Makoku because of her, she would never forgive herself so long as I live a life of self-imposed exile.

So he decides to come back, and lets Yuuri think that it is his doing.

XVIII.  
Adalbert always told himself that he would never marry, but he starts to have dreams wherein Yuuri tells him with Julia's voice that he, Adalbert, is alive and deserves to live in more than the perpetual state of awaiting death he has allowed himself.

When he can't look at the boy-king without thinking of marriage, he decides that it is time to take that advice, if only because sometimes he thinks the boy-king's consort will have his ears for looking at him that way. Which is all well and good, anyway. Adalbert is not attracted to little boys.

Finally he finds himself married to a girl named Catherine: she is beautiful, and elegant, and kind, and everyone says she is so much like Julia, but she is nothing like Julia at all.

XIX.  
Catherine does not have any special religious convictions or much of any convictions at all. She is neither brave enough for selflessness nor clever enough for divine inspiration.

This suits Adalbert well enough. If he is going to have a woman, this time she will be just a woman, and not a vessel for a greater purpose.

XX.  
Adalbert and Catherine have, or will have, a daughter. Her name is Lily and she is sweet and bright, a saint with blonde hair and pale blue eyes, and Adalbert adores her the way that only a father can. She doesn't look like him, too lovely; or like Catherine, too energetic; and she doesn't look like Julia, except for the color of her eyes, some strange inheritance from nowhere.

She looks, perhaps, most like a portrait in Blood Pledge Castle. But it has been a long time since last Adalbert saw it, and it is gone now.

There is a kind of miracle about her existence, a priceless thing created from Adalbert's miserable blood. He unlearned belief long ago, or so he tells himself, but if something like this child can come from him, perhaps there are still things left to be thankful for. Slowly he begins to have his own thoughts again; slowly he begins to live.

He doesn't know that sometimes when she vanishes, Lily can be found in the Original King's Palace, and all the maidens bow to her as she wanders through the gardens. She touches all the flowers and smiles secretly to herself, as if this is a place she knows by heart.

.

.

.

.

(Disclaimer: Fic was written before/circa the end of the second season. Third season info did not apply at the time. Sorry.)


End file.
